Healthcare Law and Medicaid Expansion

Posted on March 28, 2012 by townsend

• Justices suggest Medicaid expansion is unconstitutional, By David G. Savage and Noam N. Levey, March 28, 2012, Los Angeles Times: “The Supreme Court’s conservative justices took aim Wednesday afternoon at a final key piece of President Obama’s healthcare law, suggesting it was unconstitutional to require states to expand their Medicaid programs to cover more poor Americans. The states have ‘no realistic choice,’ said Justice Anthony Kennedy, effectively accepting the argument by 26 states challenging the law that they are being unjustly forced to administer a massive Medicaid expansion. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel A. Alito Jr. echoed Kennedy’s concerns, signaling their willingness to invalidate yet another part of the healthcare overhaul Obama signed two years ago…”
• Medicaid expansion: What’s in it for Utah?, By Kirsten Stewart, March 28, 2012, Salt Lake Tribune: “It has drawn less media attention, but Wednesday’s arguments on health reform’s expansion of Medicaid are a big deal for states. If the U.S. Supreme Court upholds the expansion, Medicaid will be the path to coverage for more than a third of Utah’s uninsured, about 139,000 adults with incomes of less than $15,000 a year. And the feds will pick up most of the tab: $4.1 billion to $4.7 billion by 2019, estimates the Kaiser Foundation. States, too, will have to pony up cash; nothing for the first three years, but eventually up to 10 percent of the total bill. In Utah, that mounts to between $174 million and $227 million by 2019, Kaiser found – a figure that strikes fear in conservatives…”